“I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t very good.” She laughed, and I saw her big clean teeth. “Let’s have another one,” she said. The bartender had left the vodka, “martini,” and ice on the bar, so we could make our own.
Sometime shortly after, we crossed the border. At one point I was still witty and neat, and the next I was slipping a bit off the bar stool, the room was spinning in the corners, and when I went to the bathroom I saw my face had taken on a vulgarity. I took a slightly longer way back to the bar stools. Amanda seemed a little slumped but pulled herself straight when she saw me. The bottle of vodka was empty.
“I think we’re done here,” I said. I paid up and we walked out. “We’ll have a nightcap back at the house.”
We turned off the town square and began walking up the path, up the steps. Amanda had my arm and was clinging to me. She was almost my height and her hands felt very big, especially compared to Olivia’s. At one point, one of us, probably me, said, “Look at the moon.” And the moon seemed very full and I wondered if it had actually been a month since I’d arrived, and then Amanda had lifted up my shirt and put her bare hands on my stomach, had worked them around to the base of my back, and we were kissing. And I was sitting on the low wall in front of the chapel, and it occurred to me that it would be better to be inside the courtyard, out of the moonlight. And then we were inside, and then Amanda unbuttoned her shirt.
“No,” I said. “I can’t do this right now.” I don’t know why nudity all of a sudden bothered me. Possibly discovery. Possibly Olivia. Some clear-minded guilt had exerted itself, but Amanda wasn’t listening. She began to unbuckle my belt. “No, we are not doing this.” I pushed her away and rebuckled my belt.
“Why not, Rupert?”
“Because we can’t. It’s not going to work.”
Amanda stood looking at me, her shirt open. “Who wants anything to work?” she said. “Is it Olivia?” she added, with great condescension.
I was so drunk I remember being impressed with Amanda’s ability to come up with that. She took my silence as acquiescence, and I must have done the same, at least for a couple of minutes. Amanda was strong and warm and she smelled wonderful. But then I wanted another drink. And then I remembered Hester, and Hester’s face at the restaurant and what I’d said to her, and all of this wouldn’t go away and I didn’t feel like fucking Amanda just then. I pushed her away and said, “I can’t do this.”
And Amanda looked angry and said, “Mister Morals.”
Which was something I’d never been accused of. I shook my head and said, “Not even you and I can fuck our way straight this time.”
I realized I was sobering up ever so slightly, but the last of the vodka was only hitting Amanda now. I remembered the bottle of vodka, empty on the bar, and that it hadn’t been that way when I’d gone to the bathroom, and that Amanda must have drunk it all, a lot, as if it were water. I was walking up the path again, buttoning my shirt, but Amanda caught up with me and I think I must have hated her because when she tried to kiss me again, I pushed her, and she fell off the path and against an olive tree. I didn’t help her up. I started walking away as quickly as I could.
Then I went and woke up Olivia and said many things to her, some of which I actually remembered the next morning.
I woke up because the sun was shining strongly. I opened my eyes just a crack. I wasn’t sure where I was and my first feeling, before recognition, was dread. Then I saw the little desk and all of Olivia’s lotions and her pills on it, and then the bed creaked gently and I saw Olivia sitting on the bed at my side. I put my arm around her as she sat there.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “What time is it?”
“It’s two.”
There was a moment of silence that I wanted to last forever, and then Olivia said, “I’m going to go down for lunch. I’ll be back in an hour. Do you want anything?”
“No,” I said. I wanted to make conversation right then, as if to prove to Olivia that I hadn’t been badly drunk, only extremely jovially drunk, which was why I could make light conversation now and didn’t really have a hangover, but this was impossible. I let her go and then remembered Amanda. I wondered if she’d ever made it out of the branches of the olive tree, whether she’d made it home. Then Clive came in and sat just where Olivia had been sitting, and for a moment I was inclined to put my arm around him.
“What were you and Amanda up to last night?” he asked in a loud whisper.
I was still trying to reconstruct the events of the previous evening and was momentarily concerned that Amanda and I had indeed been fucking each other in the light of the moon.
“Why?” I ventured.
“Well, she’s still not home yet. I was hoping she’d somehow come back and found you. But your room’s empty. I really ought to go find Tomas.”
“What does Tomas have to do with this?”
“Tomas and I were walking up the path and we saw Amanda. She seemed to have fallen into a tree. And then she and Tomas were talking, and all of a sudden I was going home to bed, and Tomas and Amanda were …”
“Were what?” I asked.
“I don’t really know. Tomas had a bottle of wine. He and I were going to drink it together, then, all of a sudden, I was going home.” Clive thought for a minute. “We really shouldn’t drink so much.”
Clive disappeared and I closed my eyes again. When I opened them, Olivia was back on the side of the bed. She was holding a glass of water. She was looking into it as if the glass possessed a divining ability.
“How do you feel now?” she asked.
“I’m all right,” I said, but I wasn’t sure yet. Olivia looked serious and it made me nervous.
“I have to ask you, Rupert. Is it true, about your little boy?”
I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, she had put the water on the side table and was crouching with her face very close to mine. “What if I made it up?”
“Why would you do that?” she asked.
“Handsome and damaged, Livvy. It’s supposed to be irresistible.”
“I don’t know about irresistible,” she said. She smiled and handed me the water. “It is dangerously attractive.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” I said. I sat up.
Clive stuck his head in the door and said, “Is he up?”
“He is,” I answered.
“Well, you better get dressed. Amanda still hasn’t shown up yet. I think we should go to the site and ask Tomas what happened to her.”
By the time I got on the bike it was almost five. Clive drove as fast as the thing would take us, which was at a dizzying speed down the hills and then excruciatingly slowly as we crested them. The workers were finishing up for the day, laying out the canvas tarps over the site, but I got a quick look at the pit, before it was completely covered; I saw that in some places they had struck rock, and this wasn’t a good sign. Clive immediately began questioning Tomas, who was his friend after all. I would have been happy to avoid Tomas altogether at that point—it was some variety of guilt at having delivered Amanda to him—but I needed to ask about the dig. I walked over slowly.
“Amanda’s all right,” said Clive. “She’s still at Tomas’s.”
To me these seemed to be mutually exclusive facts, but Clive seemed satisfied. Tomas looked positively smug. “How is she?” I asked.
“She is sleeping today a lot,” said Tomas.
“Is she coming back to the villa?” I asked.
“No, boss,” he said. “She does not like you very much.” And he laughed.
Clive guffawed, but I was in no mood for this. “Tomas, are you striking rock?”
“In some places, there’s the rock,” he said, suddenly serious.
“Well, you better find something soon. You know, the dig’s almost over.”
“I don’t understand,” said Tomas.
“No dirt, no dig.” I got on the back of the bike and Clive took of
f. I saw Tomas looking back at the pit. He knew he had to find something if he was to get the job in Athens, or even New York, where women like Amanda populated the streets. All those Amazonian blondes and all that money, but our little sandpit hadn’t yielded anything marvelous. Although—and here I was cautiously pleased—we had a number of fragments that could be restored into a rather large bowl with nautical figures on it, a starfish, a squid, a dolphin; it was lovely and justified the whole process for me. But I wasn’t feeling particularly generous to Tomas. I wondered first what Amanda had said, and then what she thought, and then—because I still wasn’t sure—what had really happened between us.
Amanda did not come back the next day either. Clive said something about Tomas having tied her up in his shed, and I said she probably liked it. Clive wasn’t any happier with Amanda than I was. He had been cultivating this friendship with Tomas for a long time and wanted something to show for it, but, since he and Nathan were leaving in a week, it seemed that all that cultivation might not yield the specific results that Clive had hoped for. Amanda’s sleeping with Tomas annoyed me, although I’m not sure why. As far as I was concerned, she had wasted whatever limited goodwill she’d managed to accrue. When Neftali came in at lunch—I usually ate back at the house to be with Olivia—and said that Nikos was going to be on the seven o’clock ferry, I felt a little thrill of pleasure. Amanda’s defecting to the working classes would disturb him profoundly. I took Clive back to the site with me, because he was bored, and we stopped off at the café in the old town for a drink first. I showed him my notebooks.
“You know, Rupert, you’re an excellent draftsman,” he said.
“I have no sense of depth,” I responded.
“But the detail.” He nodded at me encouragingly.
“Where were you when I was in the third grade?” I asked.
“Preschool probably. No, I was still at home.”
We sat for a little while enjoying a drink, the quiet of it all, anticipating Nikos’s return and gossiping in an enjoyable, unkind way. And then Clive jumped up and said, “I think something’s happening over there.”
“Where?”
“At the dig.”
I looked over and it seemed, I couldn’t see very well, that someone was swinging his shirt as a signal. There was a German couple at the next table and Clive asked to borrow their binoculars.
“They’re waving at us,” said Clive. “They’re looking right over here and waving, and someone’s holding something.”
I grabbed the binoculars from Clive. I could see it, something round, something white. “I think,” I said, the blood pounding in my ears, “I think they’ve found a head.”
11
p
When I finally had that head in my hands, cradled in my lap—the thing was heavy—and I could see it up close, I knew I was holding a work of art. The head was of a young man, possibly from the second century a.d., and this was all good, because that coincided with the earthquake. The curls were beautifully rendered, almost soft. The eyes, wide set, had a strong brow that gave the appearance of concern, or at least focus. The lips were full, closed but not hard. This was a handsome head. I laughed, but only to myself. I looked up and the workers were standing around me. Tomas had his big camel eyes on me, his head angled as if he were looking around something.
“Very nice,” I said. “This is beautiful.”
“Maybe we have the rest of the day off,” said Tomas.
“No,” I said, “this is just a head.” I held Tomas with my eyes. “Where’s the rest of him?”
Clive leaned in and whispered, “Isn’t it sometimes just a head?”
I nodded. “But Tomas doesn’t know that.”
Clive wanted to go back to the villa to share the good news with everyone, but I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do, so we went back to the café. I had wrapped the head in an old sack and unveiled it ceremoniously.
“What do you think?” I asked Clive.
“Beautiful,” he said,
“Is beauty everything?” I said. “I wish it were.”
“That would make your life very easy, Rupert, but the rest of us have to rely on our wit.”
“And virtue,” I said. I turned the head to better see the profile.
“Aren’t you supposed to be delighted?” said Clive.
“I am.”
“Great,” he said. “And now I hope you’re going to tell me why you’re behaving in such a strange manner.”
I set the head up on the table so that it was standing on its neck. I turned it so that the eyes fell on Clive. The two regarded each other.
“What?” said Clive. “Is it a fake?”
“Doesn’t look fake, does it?” I said.
“So what’s bothering you?”
“It’s not my art background this time, it’s my knowledge of human nature. There are two ways that this head might have made it into the dig. One is serendipity. The other is Tomas.”
“But it looks old,” said Clive, “doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. It’s been weathered. Look at the curls.”
Clive scratched at one of the curls, and a white powder came off.
“What is that?” asked Clive.
“That is …” I scratched some off myself. It didn’t smell like anything, so I tasted it. “It’s salt.”
“Salt? Would there be salt in the dirt?”
“No. Where do we get salt?” I asked.
“Kitchens?” he said, with some irony.
“No, Clive, not kitchens.” I’d finally figured something out, just a part of the whole but something intriguing. “Before the kitchen.”
“What are you talking about, Rupert?”
“This was weathered in the ocean.” I laughed. “I wonder if Amanda’s in on it.”
“In on what?”
“The head is big and round and heavy.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “It’s been under water, salt water.”
Clive thought for a moment. “This has something to do with Jack?”
“He’s a sculptor. Remember how I said all his work was crap? I was wrong. He’s actually very good.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. But this head …it’s the head of Antinoüs.”
“What, the statue in Delphi?”
“Same person, but this head is a copy of just a head. I think the real one is in Scandinavia somewhere. Except Jack’s changed the nose. It’s a bit narrow through the bridge. Clever, clever, clever.” I scratched off some more salt and tasted it, just to be sure. I looked at Clive. “Feel like a swim?”
When we reached the villa, only Neftali was home. She was with the caretaker, supervising the scrubbing down of the garden furniture. I had been warned by Kostas to keep all important finds to myself, especially if he was supposed to get them out of the country, so I didn’t say anything about the head. I hurried upstairs, holding it against my chest, trying to look casual, but the thing was heavy.
“Rupert,” she called.
“Yes, Neftali?” I tried not to sound guilty.
“Have you seen Olivia’s hat?”
“That old donkey-driver thing?”
“She can’t find it.”
“I’ll get her another one,” I said.
“That’s what I said.” Neftali laughed. “But she said she liked that one.”
I got up to my room and hid the head, still wrapped in the sack, under my bed. I felt like a twelve-year-old, stashing it there. Outside my window, I could hear Clive and Neftali discussing Amanda. Apparently, the villagers had expressed some concern over her behavior.
“It’s really none of their business,” said Clive.
“That’s what I said,” said Neftali. “They are all scandalized, and they are all entertained.”
I pulled on my swim trunks and grabbed a towel. I looked out the window, down at Clive and Neftali. “Come on, Clive,” I said. “Get your trunks on, and don’t forget your snorkel.”
I had
a cigarette with Neftali while I waited for him.
She said, “Is it true that you are thinking of asking Olivia to marry you?”
“Don’t you start,” I chided her.
“Nathan is worried,” she said.
“Then Nathan can talk to me,” I said.
Neftali made a disapproving face. “Don’t be like that, Rupert.”
“What do you mean?”
“With the wind blowing you here and there,” she said. “Be strong.”
“All right, Neftali.” I patted her hand, but I could tell she wasn’t finished with me.
“Why doesn’t Amanda want to come back here?”
“Why should I know?”
“You were with her that night,” she said.
“I really don’t know,” I said. Then Clive rescued me, appearing on the steps to the house with two masks and two snorkels.
“Look,” he said. “One each. I forgot that Nathan had this stuff. He never uses it.”
We took the Vespa into Faros and parked it in a small alley off the main street. Clive was worried someone would see it and know where we were. Of course, I argued this point with him. Who would see us? Who would care? We were just going for a swim to explore some local caves. Remarkably, neither of us had thought to bring wine.
The water was calm. From the shore I could see where the ledges of rock cut through the sand. I waded in with my mask around my neck, the snorkel in my hand. Clive was still on the beach. He was looking up at the rise, at the path we had descended to get to the water.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
“Just making sure we weren’t followed,” he said.
I put the snorkel in my mouth and lay on the surface of the water. All sound disappeared except for the slow draw and release of my breath. I kicked a little and spread my arms out. I looked at the floor of the ocean, maybe ten feet down, and watched a flounder skim the sandy bottom. Its eyes peered straight up into mine. I could have floated there all day, but suddenly Clive was swimming beneath me. I was startled and pulled my head out of the water.
“What are you doing, Rupert?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Snorkeling.”
“Let’s go,” he said. “What if someone shows up?”
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